pick your poison
by bellmare
Summary: there was no escape from the sinuous coils of the serpent, especially if it wore a guise like hers. —Stein/Medusa.
1. prologue

**quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius.**

_whom the gods would destroy, they first make insane._

After the entire catastrophe within the bowels of Shibusen, he considers himself lucky to have escaped with his life.

Despite the fact that he clearly recalls cleaving the witch in half – fervid flash of silvered metal and glinting snake-eyes stretched wide in mockery, he is certain of having erased her from the face of the earth – the seeds of doubt are persistent, and burrow deep within the recesses of his brain; paranoia takes root within his addled mind, and though he attempts to banish the mental images of her in her final moments, he remembers.

He remembers the triumphant smile which spreads across her features like phenolphthalein diffusing through an acidic solution – how _droll_, she would laugh at him, injecting science into his recollections like this – every bit as vibrant as the indicator which sloshes sluggishly at the bottom of a conical flask. A smile that spreads like an oil slick, noxious and _foul_, until all he can see before him are her lips, twisted into a mocking crescent, and the forked tongue which flickers tauntingly at him from between bared teeth.

He remembers her body, supple and lissom, arched temptingly around his own, like the sinuous coils of a snake; her warmth is reassuringly _real_ when pressed against him, and he almost – _almost_ – falls for her ruse, until he remembers at the last moment, and tightens his grip on the shaft of his weapon, forcing himself to stare down at his own whitened knuckles and ignore her coercive whispers.

He remembers the euphoric glint in her tawny eyes – so much like a cat's, amber-gold, but yet like a snake's, unblinking and slit-pupiled, watching his every move. Eyes which gleam with barely-suppressed, victorious lust, even as he swings the scythe, and slices her into two.

Last of all, he remembers her laughter: if his mind allowed him to dismiss the rest of the illusion, the one thing he is unable to block out is the high-pitched cadence of her laughter, ringing hollowly within the depths of his skull. He sees Medusa throw back her head and scream with derisive mirth, even as he swings the scythe and reaps her life; he hears manic merriment which echoes and reverberates in his head long after her lifeless body has hit the ground with a sombre sense of finality; long after the possessed glimmer in her eyes has faded away, leaving them glazed and unseeing; long after the squirming arrow-shaped droplets of her blood have stopped raining down around him, leaving him standing in a puddle of her lifeblood, barking out the same deranged laughter she did before.

In the labyrinthine basement, he knows that even though they have both made their move, and he is the one that deals the final blow in their fatal spar, Medusa is the one who has him backed into a corner.

_Checkmate_.

He can almost see her distorted, snake-like features before his eyes, can nearly visualise the broad sneer which is painted lavishly across her features. During her penultimate seconds, when they both laugh in tandem like a pair of demented hyenas, he realises that it was only _then_ that he had lost their little game of chess.

The serpent-queen sacrifices herself, and leaves Stein at the mercy of the resurrected demon _king_. It is only a matter of time before the game begins afresh, and once again, he is playing as a pawn, with well-nigh _nothing_ to lose.

In the loneliness of his empty, sterile house – devoid of all the trappings that would classify it as a _home_ – he lights fat black candles and lines them in a row on his coffee table, gazing absently at the burning tapers as they sink lower and lower into the melting wax.

"Treacherous snake bitch," he mutters shakily to himself, twisting the bolt on his head until he hears it click into place. "Even though you're dead, you still have to screw with me."

**endnotes. **_Damn straight, I'm back, and writing for this fandom and pairing. Rejoiiice!_


	2. haemotoxin

**Haemotoxin** (from Greek αἷμα, _haima_, "blood"; and τοξικόν, _toxikon, _"poison")

**hae·mo·tox·in,**/ˌhiməˈtɒksɪn, ˌhɛmə-/

_-noun_

**1. ** slowly progressing toxins that destroy red blood cells (that is, cause haemolysis), disrupt blood clotting, and/or cause organ degeneration and generalized tissue damage. A class of cytotoxin found in snake venom – most notably that of vipers and snakes of the _Naja_ genus – which does not act quickly enough to kill a human.

He smiles at her in the sly manner of a conspirational schoolboy, leans closer to the tawny-eyed woman as she presses gentle fingers against bruised flesh. Her nails leave fading imprints upon his skin, bleached pale by hours spent in the dark solitude of his coldly sterile home, sunken red crescent-ridges glaring starkly back at him.

"I would have you know I can take perfectly good care of myself," he says calmly, the ghost of a grin plucking at the corners of his mouth. "I'm a _doctor_, after all."

The word hangs in the air like a bubble of poison vapour, heavy with implication; she regards him with cool impassiveness from beneath lowered lids, her expression mirroring his—they grin at each other in the manner of wary cats, sleek and strong, smirking emptily at one another over a mauled mouse with its neck broken from where sharp canines slipped between fragile vertebrae. They bare their teeth in quasi-good-humoured mockeries of genuine smiles, lips stretched tautly until it feels as though their faces will crack into two. Her nails dig deeper against him, press against thin layers of cloth.

"_Is_ that so?"

The first word is a sibilant hiss, the quietly contemplative exhalation of an indolent snake. The single syllable stretches out longer than it should, and he lowers his head, lips brushing against the shell of her ear as he speaks. "Don't you believe me?"

A shadow stirs in the depths of her coppery gaze; a smirk twists lazily across her lips, and she recoils casually back from their proximity, fingers still furled loosely around his wrist, holding him in place. "And why should I?" The palm of her hand is warm through the sleeve of his coat, and he wonders if the heat has burned right through the material, leaving a reddened imprint on his skin.

Stein watches as the school nurse wraps the cuff of the aneroid sphygmomanometer around his arm, takes his blood pressure, slides the cold disc of metal to the crook of his elbow. His eyes trace the line of mercury which rises up the slender capillary tube and subsides back down again, flicks back towards her face. "Wh—" The first word catches in his dry throat, and he absently coughs to clear it, repeats himself with slightly more force. "Whyever not?"

Her laugh starts off as a startled chuckle of disbelief: the kind which is quietly sardonic, but at the same time oddly coquettish; it tapers off into an almost girlish giggle, sweetly mellifluous—_too_ sweet. "How can you be a doctor, sworn to heal and take care of others, when you can't even take care of yourself?" She pauses momentarily, the hint of a challenge in her breathless voice. "Do you even know what the Hippocratic Oath is?"

For an instant, he only stares silently at her, brows raised with quizzical amusement at the blunt force of her words; he smiles a brittle smile, reaches forwards to trace the line of her chin with his free hand. A spasm of bold daring seizes him, and with motions which bemuse even himself, he brushes his knuckles against her jaw, absently feeling the contours of your features. "What do you propose to know about me?"

Medusa's soft laugh is knowing and almost teasing, laced with a fleeting hint of something else he cannot quite detect. "More than you know even about yourself," she murmurs, lowering her voice to the suggestive purr of the cat which endeavours to dispel the misgivings of its prey. "And more, much more."

"Really, now?" He cannot believe her, the youngest, newest, greenest member of staff on the Shibusen board, cannot believe this entirely too friendly upstart who prescribes and dispenses tried-and-tested medicines and homeopathic cures alike.

She titters softly to herself, disengages herself gently from his fingers – though not before he can catch the faint fragrance of lily-of-the-valley, the sweetness offset by a trace of something more tart – and begins to fill out his medical forms, elaborate script running across the lined page like fleeing black shadows. "I suggest two days of bedrest, minimum," she says abruptly, her tones clipped, precise. "Try not to strain yourself too much. _Whatever_ were you up to this weekend?" Her voice is suddenly sly, suggestive, the glint in her eyes bright with mischief. "Whittling away the night hours with some sweet young thing and ended up overstraining yourself? Well, at least you're trying."

The barking laugh breaks loose from him before he can stop it. "Are you mistaking me for_ Spirit Albarn_?" he snorts; with a grimace, he repositions himself in his seat, wincing as an ill-advised movement sends spasms of pain clawing up his ankle, running along his marrow of his bones. "It's perfectly natural for you to still be _confused_ about who is who around here since you're new, but this is ridiculous. _I'm_ not the one chasing skirts when I have better things to do—"

Before he can finish, Medusa laughs, meets his eyes, brushes up close against him; despite the warmth of her body, a sudden chill rushes over his skin, an unbidden shudder which ripples through his extremities. "That you definitely do, _Doctor _Stein."

His response withers and dies away at his lips; her amber eyes bore into his, and he finds himself transfixed, unable to look away. She holds his gaze for several more seconds, until she blinks, eyelids flickering like a lizard's; without a word, she helps him to his feet, gently shepherds him towards the Infirmary door. "Come back if the pain still bothers you," she says cheerfully, as the door swings shut; the last thing he sees before he limps away are the contours of her face, half-swathed in shadow. A glint of coppery-orange, a fleck of red, a faint smirk which plays along her lips; dimly, he recalls the night before, spent battling an elusive foe silhouetted against the moon, who fights with darting arrows and snaking vectors. He recalls a burst of harsh, cruel laughter, like a mirthless laugh of a desert jackal, remembers a sliver of pale skin and dark fabric, hair the colour of tarnished, weatherbeaten gold, silvered by starlight. He hears the soft _clink_ of bracelets, the whisper of cloth, the subdued wail of wind fighting in vain against the shadowy figure perched almost daintily upon a gnarled broomstick, hears the hiss of a thousand serpents rising around him in concentric spirals.

_No, can't be. Must be the morphine._

And now, how he laments his folly, detests himself for failing to notice the signs paraded starkly before him on that warm autumn's morning. The sympathetic concern in her eyes seems almost mocking and derisive now, and he is almost certain that behind that mask of guilelessness, Medusa was laughing all along, exalting in his failure to see her for what she was.

He can picture her as clearly now as though it were only yesterday, and not several years ago—he can see the contempt in her narrowed eyes, hear the cold, scathing scorn in her voice as she jokes about being his _assistant_, the nurse to his doctor, as though he needs somebody to help him keep track of things.

An icy tongue of cold laps at the base of his spine when he recalls the graceful curve of her smile – musingly, abhorrently _fake_ – and the cadence of her laughter as she promises to check in on him every day, to ensure that he's healing fine. He remembers the tiny spark of bewildered mollification that flickers to life in the pit of his stomach, for, after all, he's still human, and it's somewhat pleasant to be flattered by intelligent women.

_Flattered by intelligent women. _With shaking hands, he pinches out the first of the candles before him, ignoring the searing bite of fire against the pads of his thumb and forefinger. For several moments, he remains rooted in place, skin tingling where dancing flames had previously licked impotently at, staring into the spot where pinprick spots of fire once burned. The first candle is reduced to a molten stub by this point, puddles of black wax spreading across the glassy surface on which the lit taper once stood, rapidly-solidifying blots of shadow radiating out across the table.

Alongside it, three more candles gutter and sputter from a nonexistent breeze, casting long, twisted shadows across the walls.

**- - - x x x x x - - -**

**epilogue. **_Usual disclaimers apply. Keep in mind that this is a flashback, and that it occurred a few years before the events off the anime/manga._


End file.
